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Which Is Best For Your Website – Responsive or Mobile Optimized Web Design

Looking at the trends that are prevalent, mobiles have taken over desktops and as reported by Google and Search Engine Land in May, more searches are done on mobiles than on any other platform. Smartphone adoption rates have increased from 36% to 61% in the past two years. Since majority of the Smartphone users are now surfing the internet on their mobile phones, it is clear that web developers need to cater to the needs of mobile users.

Mobile web sites have been around for a long time but the greater changes in these websites started to seem visible with the advent of the first iPhone. Two major methods for handling mobile have been:

Dedicated mobile website

Responsive web design

Knowing Dedicated Mobile Site:

A dedicated mobile site is a site that shows just the important content on the mobile version of the site. These are the sites where one notices “mobile-optimized” or “mobile-version” written at the bottom of the webpage. These dedicated mobile websites are coded for the purpose of solely showing off specific content to mobile users. Dedicated mobile sites, though ideal in some cases, are not feasible for many businesses. Some of the pros and cons of having a mobile optimized site are:

Pros:

The customized content leads to happier visitors

There are some tools like Duda Mobile that are inexpensive and can automatically convert a site to mobile site.

Complete customized experience can lead to more sales in large volume operations.

There may be a boost in traffic to a website on implementing the mobile optimization experience like Google and other search engines.

Responsive web design or adaptive websites are the sites that change their scaling based on the platform they are being viewed on. They respond to the particular devices and Google has stated that it will start rewarding businesses that have responsive website design with higher Search Engine Result Page rankings. Regardless of these perks, responsive web design also has some pros and cons:

Pros:

Automatic and lesser time for upkeep required

Boost in search traffic and rewards by Google

Responsive web design leads to painless and cheaper maintenance

Cons:

Older websites need to be redesigned

The responsive web design concept is new and the design conventions are flexible and not standard.

Conclusion on the comparison:

Most of the clients prefer responsive web designing these days and there are only 2 circumstances when one should consider “mobile-only” sites:

1.When you already have a site and wouldn’t want to incur expenses of a new responsive web design

2.When your online business is doing extremely well and developing an extra website means extra millions of dollars in revenue.

In all other cases, a responsive web design accommodates everything and is a better option to consider now.